pianist vs. piano player

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:32 PM +0000 2/7/02, Herbert Stahlke wrote:
>In all those Westerns where the piano in a saloon gets
>shot up, it's always a piano player, even though it's
>nearly always solo.  Wasn't Sam in Casablanca also a
>piano player, not a pianist?  Or doesn't that function
>get mentioned in the film?  But I think venue is a
>factor.  In a bar or a night club it's more likely to be
>a piano player.
>
>Herb Stahlke

Exactly; that's a more direct way of getting at what I was getting
at:  With "fiddler" vs. "violinist" it's genre of music, but with
"pianist" vs. "piano player" it may be venue (Casablanca/Shoot the
Piano Player) or (if the venue is more formal) kind of music or
nature of activity (solo vs. ensemble).  Maybe we have this prototype
(in Rosch's sense) of pianist as, say, Horowitz or Rubenstein or
Cliburn playing Chopin in a concert hall, and the farther we depart
from that (in either type of setting, type of music, or role of the
piano with respect to other members of the ensemble), the more likely
we are to substitute "piano player".

larry